


Keeping Secrets

by justanothersong



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Family Drama, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fix-It, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Fic, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Mutant Powers, Mutant Reader, Reader-Insert, Runaway, Tony Stark Has A Heart, parental loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-14 23:27:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8033173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanothersong/pseuds/justanothersong
Summary: Tony groaned. “So what the hell do I do now?” You heard a rustling sound and got the impression that Pepper was moving closer to him.“You take care of your little girl, Tony,” she told him gently.





	Keeping Secrets

It took a special something for an eleven year old to make it all the way to New York City from Syracuse on a bus without being manhandled or found out, though in looking back, you could not figure out if it was bravery, determination, or all-out stupidity. In any event, you had been desperate to get out of your fervently religious aunt’s home before she had you force-baptized at her off-the-rails church and shuttled off to sleepaway Bible camp with a certain smarmy, bald-headed preacher with an eye for the younger girls of the congregation, so you’d decided it was worth the risk.

You had managed an artfully forged letter to explain why you were traveling alone, but no one had even questioned you. You’d stolen enough money from your aunt’s purse for a one-way bus ticket and some more traveling costs once you made it to the Big Apple, and carried nothing else in your backpack but a few changes of clothes, your birth certificate, some photocopies of legalized minor emancipation paperwork you had Xeroxed at the library, and a photograph of your mother.

Searching out your wayward father had never been high on your life’s to-do list, but your mother made you promise that if things got bad with Aunt Margaret that you wouldn’t just run without direction, that you’d find your father and ask for help. Even at such a tender age, you knew a deathbed promise was nothing to shake a stick at, so when you saw it was time to take a powder, you did as you had been told.

 

You arrived at Stark Tower a day and a half after you skipped out on boarding the school bus and took a Greyhound to the city instead, telling the receptionist that you were there to see Tony Stark. The middle-aged woman with frizzy hair and way too much make-up had smiled a little meanly and asked where your parents were.

“Only got one left and he’s up in an office somewhere I bet,” you replied bluntly. “So why don’t you give him a ring and tell him I’m here?”

The woman had dropped her poorly-placed genteel face immediately. “Mr. Stark does not have any children. Why don’t you go find whatever field trip you escaped from, before I have to call security?”

You huffed and rolled your eyes. Unzipping the front pocket of your backpack, you pulled out your birth certificate from Saint Elizabeth Medical Center in Utica and slammed it on the reception desk in front of her. Even with her Coke-bottle glasses, she could see the neatly printed “Anthony Edward Stark of New York, NY” beneath the block lettering listing FATHER’S NAME.

“Either you bring me up to see him or I take this to the New York Post,” you told her, glaring. You might have been young but you’d seen enough tabloid headlines in your day to know that illegitimate children of movie stars and millionaires were big news for the paparazzi set. The woman nodded and picked up her phone as you tucked away the paperwork and waited.

That landed you standing in front of another desk, this time in an opulent office, with the man himself sitting behind it, arms crossed over his chest and frowning. He wore a dark blue suit and a pair of sunglasses even though you were indoors; judging by the bottle and half-filled glass sitting on the desk beside him, you were pretty certain he was either hammered or recovering from the same from the night before. A slim woman with strawberry blonde hair stood beside his chair, one hand resting on the back of it, and seemed to be studying you with a critical eye, though her expression was much less perturbed than that of your until recently unknown father.

“Look, kid,” he began, leaning forward in his seat. “Anybody can get a name written on a birth certificate. It doesn’t prove a thing.”

You rolled your eyes, and the redhead seemed to stifle a small gasp. 

“My mother didn’t lie,” you told him stubbornly.

He snorted, looking at the birth certificate again, and then dropped it on his desk. “I don’t even recognize this name,” he told you, shaking his head. “So tell her if you’re after me for child support, go fishing somewhere else. I’m not biting.”

You sighed and reached into another pocket on your backpack, pulling out a pack of Marlboros you had lifted off of a sleeping woman on the Greyhound that had brought you to New York.

“She said you’d say something like that,” you retorted, and held the cigarette aloft between two fingers. “Said to show you her little party trick and it’d jog your memory.”

“What? Why do you have that?” Tony said, frowning behind his sunglasses. “Pepper, why does an eight year old have a cigarette? There’s no smoking in here!”

“Tony, she’s not eight, she’s eleven,” the redhead, presumably Pepper, hissed. She moved to round the desk, ostensibly to relieve you of the cancer-stick in your hands.

You rolled your eyes again, bringing the filter to your lips and taking a long drag, watching as a small flame burst to life at the other end of the cigarette and it began to smoke. You coughed and waved your hand to dissipate some of the smoke before stubbing it out nonchalantly on the glass top of Tony’s desk.

“Remember now?” you asked. Pepper had frozen in place at the sight of the spontaneous flame, and Tony was gaping. 

After a long moment, he swallowed hard and relented. “Yeah. Yeah, I do,” and slipped the sunglasses from his face, staring at you with wide, shocked brown eyes.

It became decidedly less businesslike after that. Pepper shuttled you off to a suite of rooms a few floors up, having you get cleaned up and ordering in an impressive meal for such short notice. Tony had a few business meetings that needed to be handle, she had explained, and then he would come up and you could talk.

That was fine by you. The bathtub was big enough to swim in and you hadn’t had anything to eat but a few scraps from a vending machine since you had left your aunt’s house. Pepper seemed to watch you with a mixture of keen interest and disbelief in her eyes. You had the feeling she had expected a kid to show up asking after her boss at some point.

“Is there someone we need to call?” she asked mildly, while you worked your way through a plate of what was probably the best macaroni and cheese you’d ever eaten.

You shook your head. “Nope,” you replied, pausing to take a drink of the glass of milk she had poured you when you sat down.

“What about your mother?” Pepper pressed gently. “She must be wondering where you are.”

“She’s dead,” you replied bluntly. There was that pity in her eyes, the look you always tried to avoid. You hated when people looked at you like that.

“I’m so sorry,” she said quietly. 

You shrugged. “It was, like, a year and a half ago. It’s okay,” you told her pragmatically.

“What happened?” Pepper asked. “Was there an accident, or was she ill…?”

“Cancer,” you said bluntly, and paused to mime the action of smoking a cigarette. “Too many party tricks. My Aunt Margaret said it was God’s punishment for being a harlot, but she’s crazy, so.”

Pepper nodded, eyebrows raised. “It certainly sounds like it,” she agreed. “And not very nice, either. She is your mother’s sister?”

“Yeah,” you agreed. “Her and my mom didn’t really get along but when Mom got sick, I had to go somewhere or social services would have gotten all uppity.”

“And tried to contact your father?” Pepper suggested, and you nodded.

“Mom said she wasn’t going to be one of those sad ladies in the news all the time, arguing with some rich asshole about paying child support,” you parroted back. “S’why she left the city when she figured out she was knocked up.” You finished your glass of milk and Pepper automatically refilled it; you flashed her a toothy smile in thanks.

“I bet she didn’t want just anybody knowing about her ‘party trick’ either,” Pepper said delicately. “Did she teach you how to do that?”

You nodded enthusiastically, then paused in your meal to hold out one hand, palm facing up. With a small amount of concentration, a little flame flickered to life, hovering just millimeters above your skin but not burning.

“Mom said she figured out how to do it as a kid too,” you explained, wiggling your fingers to make the flame jump higher and then retreat lower, back and forth. “Said my Grandpa Chuck could too, but we weren’t s’posed to talk about it, because people would think it’s weird and wanna put us in jail and do tests and stuff. But she said I could show Tony if it would make him remember her.”

You closed your palm to snuff out the flame and went back to your meal, scraping the edge of your spoon along the ceramic bowl to gather up more cheese. 

Reeling a little from the surprise, Pepper shook her head. “And your aunt?” she asked. “Can she do this too?”

You snorted into your glass of milk. “Nah,” you said. “Aunt Margaret says it’s the mark of the devil, or something dumb like that. Mom said she was just jealous that she didn’t know how, and it made her all crazy like she is.”

You sighed and let your spoon rest against your empty bowl, stifling a yawn. It had been a long few days; you hadn’t slept on the bus, too keyed up and too nervous to be traveling so far all alone, knowing you were setting out to confront the father you had never met. It seemed to be hitting you now, after your bath and a belly full of good food relaxed you.

Pepper smiled at you not unkindly. “Why don’t you lay down for a little while?” she suggested, glancing at the clock. “Tony is very busy today. We didn’t know you were coming so I couldn’t cut his schedule down beforehand.”

You eyed her warily. “I’m too big for naps,” you protested.

“Don’t be silly,” Pepper told you as she stood, clearing the plates away from the table. “You never get too big for naps. I try to take as many as I can.”

“Yeah?” you asked, and the redhead nodded. 

“You don’t even have to go to sleep,” she told you. “Just lay down and rest your eyes. How does that sound?”

You yawned again and relented. “Okay,” you agreed. “But I’m not taking a nap.”

“Of course not,” Pepper agreed, and led you towards the bedroom.

 

You woke to find yourself snuggled into a thick blanket, curled up into a ball in the middle of a massive bed. It took a few seconds for you to remember where you were, and how you got there; the soft mattress and warm linens were a far cry from the rollaway bed full of poking springs and flattened pillows that you slept on at Aunt Margaret’s house.

The quiet and stillness in the air told you that it was late, the moon shining in through the window confirming it. There were voices outside of the bedroom and you got up slowly, creeping on tip-toes to stand behind the partially closed door and listen.

“...knew her but she could have told them any guy’s name at the hospital,” Tony was saying.

You heard Pepper huff in annoyance. “For God’s sake Tony, she looks like you! Did you see her roll her eyes? I know that look, Tony, I know it very well. That child is your daughter.”

“Well why the hell wouldn’t her mother have said something?” Tony hissed back. “I’m not… I’m not THAT bad of a guy, I’d have made sure she was taken care of!”

“Seems as though that is exactly what she didn’t want,” Pepper responded. “Telling the girl to find you seems a last-ditch effort to keep her out of her crazy aunt’s warpath.”

“What about this aunt, anyway? She going to show up here, making a fuss about custody or something?” Tony asked. “I’m not about to get into a legal fight over a kid I don’t even know.”

Pepper sighed. “It sounds like the woman is… Tony, the poor girl has been living in a pretty damn abusive situation. Telling her that her mother is damned, that she’s got the mark of the devil on her. You cannot send her back to that.”

“There’s that too,” Tony protested. “What the hell is this fire stuff anyway? There aren’t any mutants in my family, Pep.”

“That you know of,” Pepper retorted. “You know how people are. They’d try and keep it hidden. The girl thinks someone would put her in jail if they knew.” She sighed heavily. “If you try and send her back I can guarantee she’ll run away again, and do you want that on your conscience? It’s a small miracle she made it this far without being hurt or… or even worse! Can you really put her back into a situation that’s going to land her back on the streets, all alone? Your own flesh and blood.”

Tony groaned. “So what the hell do I do now?” You heard a rustling sound and got the impression that Pepper was moving closer to him.

“You take care of your little girl, Tony,” she told him gently.

Aunt Margaret turned up at the Tower two days later. You hadn’t even known that she knew who your father was, let alone where to find him. Tony wouldn’t even meet with her; you listened from another room as Pepper told her in no uncertain terms that she would not be permitted anywhere near his daughter, and that if she tried to wrangle him into a custody battle, his lawyers would have it tossed out before it made it to the bench.

And then he’d make sure a warrant was issued on grounds of child abuse and neglect.

You never heard from her after that.

 

Things were weird for a few days after that. Tony Stark had no idea what to do with a suddenly appearing half-grown daughter and you had no idea what to do with a recently acquired, mildly immature, and astonishingly rich father. 

He talked to you about your mother, what he could remember. They hadn’t known each other very long, he explained, trying to sound gentle. He told you that she had been beautiful, but you’d already known that; he told you that she had loved to dance, which you hadn’t known at all. He played a song that he remembered dancing with her to, something soft and sweet, and said that he liked to spin her around when they danced because it would make her laugh.

Tony seemed a little sad when he talked about her, and that surprised you, though you tried not to show it. He said he was sorry he didn’t look for her after she left.

“Sometimes I’m a very stupid man,” he told you.

You grinned. “Mom told me that too,” you said, and you both laughed.

His expression softened at the sound, and he told you that your laugh sounded just like hers. It struck a chord so deep within you that for the first time since she had died, you began to cry. Tony let you hold onto him, rubbing slow circles on your back, and telling you that it was okay, that he was here now, and he’d never let anything happen to you.

 

It was decided that it would be best if things were kept quiet. You certainly didn’t need distant relatives crawling out of the woodwork, looking to make custody claims in hopes of a payout to make them go away, and Tony’s lifestyle and work could make you a target if he wasn’t careful.

“It’s up to you,” he told you. “I’m not ashamed of you, kiddo, but I know how this works. I’ve seen too many trust fund kids get roughed up by someone looking to collect a ransom or send a message.”

“He’s not lying,” Pepper, ever the voice of reason, added. “We can get you a regular bodyguard if you would like, if it would make you feel safer.”

You’d shaken your head. “I’m cool with being a secret,” you had responded with a shrug, still quietly frightened of your mother’s warnings, of what people might want if they knew what you could do.

You spent the ensuing months primarily in the Tower; Pepper was homeschooling you and getting your studies up to date, occasionally taking you out for jaunts into the city under the cover of being her niece visiting from California. No one seemed to take much notice.

Pepper was a godsend. Where Tony was fumbling and oftentimes unsure of what to do with you, Pepper was level-headed and pragmatic.

“She’s a kid, Tony, not an equation you have to solve,” she would tell him more than once as time passed.

She was the one who came running the morning you woke up to bloody sheets and panicked; you cried a little and Pepper did her best to comfort you, bringing you everything you would need to take care of yourself and slipping you tablespoon of whiskey here and there when the cramps got really bad.

Tony was more or less useless in that respect. “What? Already?” he had asked Pepper in a hushed voice, expression clearly horrified. “But she’s just a baby!”

Pepper had snorted. “Tony, she’s going to be thirteen next month,” she reminded.

She had even been there the first time you tentatively called Tony “Dad” at the dinner table; she teared up a little, while Tony grinned like a fool.

 

It was even Pepper who found the Xavier school when you were fourteen.

“There will be others there, like you,” she had explained quietly. Your father hadn’t been very keen on letting you go, but the older you became, the more stifling the quiet security of the Tower had seemed. You wanted to be out in the world, meeting people, making friends. 

“Party tricks?” you asked, arching an eyebrow in an expression so very much like your father that Pepper had to smile. Your power had only grown as you had gotten older; Tony had told you it was a form of pyrokinesis, an ability to conjure and control flame.

Pepper had nodded. “Party tricks,” she agreed, and that had settled it for you. It was comforting to know that you weren’t the only freak out in the world.

You adored the school. It wasn’t so far away that you couldn’t spend holidays at home, and it was full of people like you, who had been born a little different. Everyone’s talents were different, and you were amazed at some of what you saw there. They taught you how to level better control on your own talents, and how to use them for protection.

Tony wrote constantly, emails and handwritten letters coming almost daily. You’d laugh at him when you’d talk on the phone.

“Dad, you can ease up. I’ll be home in like a week for Thanksgiving,” you reminded.

“Not enough, peanut,” he replied. “I’m too used to having you underfoot all the time.”

 

They had wanted you to stay at the school after you graduated, to help groom the other children who were coming in one after another, numbers greater than they’d ever seen before, and you had considered it. But the world had changed by then, too much for you to bear away from home. Tony wasn’t just your father anymore, he was Iron Man, a hero. 

If he was going to put his life on the line to protect the world, then you would do the same, right by his side. You were 19 when you returned to the Tower and took up the fight alongside your father.

You didn’t do much to keep your relationship secret by that point, but you didn’t really talk it up either. Coulson knew, of course, but you had kept your mother’s name and so far as the others had been concerned, you were just another of SHIELD’s finds, a talented pyrokinetic who had volunteered to become part of the Avengers Initiative. 

Things got a little complicated after that.

Bruce figured it out quickly enough, spending the most time at the Tower and in close quarters, working with your father. He told you that the resemblance was there, but not terribly blatant; it was the expressions you made, the way you huffed and rolled your eyes and smirked every now and again, that were mirror images of Tony’s. 

He said he wouldn’t breathe a word of it. It was your secret to tell, not his. 

And then there were alien-gods and the world falling apart at the seams, Hydra and hidden assassins and a warrior-king with a thirst for vengeance. Tony tried to keep you out of it, didn’t want to see you hurt; you spent a lot of time back at the Xavier school then, helping where you could and keeping a low profile. It was a rough go for a long while; you loved the team as surely as you loved your father and Pepper, and it was like a family being torn apart to see them fighting. 

When the dust settled and your world was complete again, there was a new change on the horizon, one more hero come home to roost in your father’s Tower.

 

Bucky Barnes was like no one you had ever met before.

You knew Steve pretty well at that point and the whole man-out-of-time was old schtick, but Bucky was just something different. Something other. A sort of speed bump in your daily routine that you just couldn’t get past.

He made your blood rush a little faster and your skin feel a little tighter. Once, at one of the ridiculous parties your father liked to throw, he had brushed past you through the crowd, placing a hand on your hip to steady you as he moved past.

You made the accent candles on all the tables flare in response, without even trying.

At first it seemed he was just always there, wherever you went: the training room, the kitchen, the lounge, always in place as though awaiting your arrival. You didn’t even realize as you began seeking him out, frowning at empty rooms and moving on to the next likely place he might be.

A cool October evening found you slipping onto the penthouse balcony to find him leaning against the rail, a cigarette in one hand as he gazed out over the city lights.

“You know that’s bad for you,” you cautioned, wrapping your arms around yourself to fend off the evening chill as you approached.

He gave a small smile when he saw you. “So they tell me,” he agreed, exhaling a long stream of smoke. “But I think I might get a free pass on that one, what with the healin’ and all.”

You snorted, sidling up alongside him at the rail and leaning over to watch the traffic crawling along the busy street below, eyes drifting to his long fingers as he stubbed the cigarette out on the concrete barrier and let the filter fall.

“Litterbug,” you told him, nudging him with your elbow.

He gave a low chuckle, and turned around, leaning his back against the rail. “What’re you doin’ out here in the cold?” Bucky asked.

You gave a noncommittal shrug. “Nothing really,” you relented. “It’s so quiet in there tonight. I’m glad for the time off and all but it leaves me a little…”

“Restless?” Bucky offered, and you nodded. Of course, he would understand; your lives were not your own anymore, with a world to be set right and enemies gathering at every gate. If you weren’t out on a mission, you were training for one. A night off was a blessing but it would leave you with energy thrumming beneath your skin, waiting for the next emergency call.

You turned towards him to speak but forgot the words before they left your tongue, too focused with the way his eyes seemed to study you, drifting across your face as though he were searching for something. You wondered if he was thinking what you had been for ages, wondering if there was a line you might cross, or if one even existed there at all.

Bucky was older than you, by more than just the virtue of his lengthy stays on ice. The age he knew, the years he remembered, still made him much your senior; and still, there was something there, a cool electric hum that seemed to waver in the air between you.

Bucky licked his lips. “Tell you what, doll,” he offered slowly. “How’s about I take you out for a bite? Just you an’ me for a change.”

You took a deep breath and smile. “That sounds nice,” you agreed.

Bucky grinned in return. “Yeah?” he asked, and you nodded affirmatively. “Well, what are we waiting for?” he said, and offered you his arm.

 

You moved slowly, for a lot of reasons. The age difference was one; the fact that your father had never been too fond of Bucky, not keen on his coming to stay at the Tower until Steve and some of the others had lobbied hard on his behalf, was another. 

The biggest obstacle, though, was that Bucky was still recovering. Decades of harm couldn’t be undone in a span of months; he had to leave sometimes, to go someplace he wouldn’t let you follow. When he’d return he’d be exhausted and morose, telling you that he wasn’t quite back to himself, not just yet.

He’d keep trying, he told you. For you. For Steve. For everyone.

“As long as it’s what you want,” you would tell him, time and again.

You kept this thing between you a secret. You were well used to keeping your little secrets by then, and you found yourself surprised at how easy it was. No one else seemed to know, not at first.

Natasha eventually found out. Walked in on the two of you getting comfortable on the sofa in Bucky’s suite and nearly blew a gasket. You couldn’t help but roll your eyes as they began to argue, causing Natasha to stop short and peer at you a long moment before shaking her head and pulling Bucky into the other room by his sleeve.

They battled it out in harsh whispers in Bucky’s bedroom that you could just barely hear. Lots of references to your age -- “Christ, Barnes, she’s just a kid, what are you thinking?” -- and mentions of the troubles of the past, about unnecessarily dividing the team if things went bad.

But it was Bucky’s words that stopped you short, caused your breath to catch in your throat when you heard them, strained and plaintive and half-mumbled as they were.

“What the hell do you have to say for yourself?” Natasha had demanded.

“I love the girl, Tasha,” Bucky told her. “I… I just love her, is all.”

The resigned (if somewhat pained) sigh told you that Natasha would keep your secret, for now.

 

There was still something holding Bucky back, and you had a fair idea of what it was. The next time Steve cleared a few days for the other man to go for ‘treatment’, you followed without them knowing. They went to a compound upstate, another property owned by your father, and you arrived just after they had strapped Bucky down into some metal contraption.

Steve was watching from behind a plexiglass window, concern written over his features; the others there, a few medical personnel you recognized from their occasional employment at the Tower’s medical center, were similarly protected. From inside an insulated booth, one of the doctors began reading of a list of words that you knew all too well by then, the triggers to activate the latent programming in Bucky’s mind.

They were about halfway through when he saw you, standing quietly behind Steve, who had been so wrapped up in his own concern that he hadn’t noticed you at all.

“No!” Bucky said quickly, eyes gone wide as he noted your presence. “No, wait, stop!”

The doctor continued unabated, though he looked somewhat uncomfortable and glanced to Steve for reassurance. Steve nodded but in his motion caught a glimpse of you from the corner of his eye and muttered a low curse.

You were never meant to see this. No one was.

Steve said your name in a kindly tone. “Please, go,” he told you. “Buck wouldn’t want anybody to see him like this.”

“No,” you responded resolutely, planting your feet firmly where you stood. You didn’t even look at Steve, kept your gaze trained on Bucky who was pleading with them to stop, eyes glancing wildly back and forth from the doctor to you until the last word in the chain was spoken.

Nothing happened.

Bucky was breathing hard and his eyes were a little bloodshot, but he hadn’t shut down, his expression staying true and not falling into the cold, blank stare you had seen only once and that he had done everything to keep you from encountering again.

“Steve?” he asked, almost meekly. He pulled at the straps on his forearms. “I think… I’m okay?”

Steve nearly pulled the door to the little booth off the hinges as he ran into the room where Bucky sat to free him from his restraints. He enveloped the other man into a tight hug, both of them laughing and even tearing up a little. You weren’t sure what they had been doing, all the days spent away from the team, but clearly it had worked; the trigger words had failed, and the Winter Soldier was dead and gone.

Releasing his hold on his old friend, Bucky turned to where you had followed Steve inside and swept you up into his arms, lifting you straight off the ground and twirling you around until you threw your head back and laughed.

When he set you down, Bucky took your face in his hands. 

“I’m free,” he whispered softly, before kissing the breath out of you. 

You were vaguely aware of Steve muttering “What the shit?” somewhere behind you but you didn’t pay him any mind, too occupied with wrapping your arms around Bucky and pulling him closer, celebrating his newfound freedom the best way you knew how.

You didn’t return to the city that night, choosing instead to remain at the compound. There were rooms available for all of the team if they ever needed a respite from the Tower, and it seemed simpler than heading back. Besides, you wanted some privacy; Bucky had held back from you for too long, too worried that something would trigger him and he might hurt you. His concerns had been put to rest now and you wanted a chance to celebrate away from prying eyes.

Besides, Steve was adamant you come clean about your relationship once back with the rest of the team.

“No more secrets,” he had said, and you could understand why he felt that way. 

Steve took a room down a different corridor, a good walk away from where you and Bucky had decided to stay, and for that you were grateful. The whole super-soldier with enhanced senses thing was great when you needed Bucky to keep an ear open for potential interruptions (except for Natasha, of course, with her light-as-air footsteps that had you certain she was part Tolkien elf or something), but it could be a little awkward if Steve was in earshot when you were spending some time alone together.

“You’re amazin’, you know that?” Bucky said, spinning you around the room until you laughed breathlessly in his arms. “Havin’ this kinda faith in me… not bein’ afraid, all this time, knowing what I was, what they had locked inside my head…”

“It wasn’t you, Bucky,” you told him, taking his face in your hands. It was an argument you’d had time and again, Bucky beating himself up over his past and you trying to make him understand that he wasn’t culpable for anything he did when his life and his will weren’t his one.

“Not anymore,” he told you, grinning broadly, light dancing in his eyes. He let out a joyful whoop and spun you around again until you were dizzy and you couldn’t stop each eruption of giggles as they slipped from your lips. 

Bucky held you to his chest and dropped to the bed on his back, laughing alongside you even as you both fell. You relaxed against him, panting a little as you tried to catch your breath, then pushed yourself up so you straddled his waist.

You wanted to say something coy, something sexy or even cute, but when you gazed down and saw the way he smiled at you, the strange sense of wonderment on his face as he grinned, as though he was marveling at your very existence, your breath caught in your throat. You reached down and pushed a stray lock of his dark hair out of his eyes, tucking it behind his ear, and sighed.

“I love you, Bucky,” you told him simply, unable to stop the tumble of words from your lips and not really wanting to, needing him to know it for once, for keeps.

Bucky pulled you down to kiss you, whispering the words back against your lips, over and over again until the morning light.

 

You drove back to the Tower in Steve’s truck, crammed together in the front seat. It was a little awkward, Steve casting you both half-disapproving glances in the rearview mirror every time you’d rest your head on Bucky’s shoulder or he’d catch your hand in his own. 

You ignored Steve, intent on taking some comfort in Bucky’s arms before you had to speak with your father. You’d promised Steve, no more secrets; that meant trooping into Tony’s lab once you returned and spilling all your secrets for good.

“Guys?” you said quietly, realizing you still had one left to tell in present company.

Bucky, who had been starting to doze against the window, opened his eyes and frowned. “Something wrong, doll?” he asked.

You heaved a deep breath. “I should probably tell you,” you began. “Before we get back, just so you know… so you know what we’re in for. About Tony? He’s… well, he’s…”

“Your old man,” Bucky filled in, giving you a gentle smile.

“Wait, what?” Steve asked, unintentionally swerving the truck before righting it in his lane.

You cocked your head towards Bucky in surprise. “How did you know?” you asked.

He chuckled. “He’s about as protective of you as he is Pepper, ain’t hard to see it. Besides, you kinda look like’im sometimes, doll. Just in the faces you pull now and again… helluva lot cuter, though.”

You grinned at him, nuzzling against his cheek until he turned to kiss you.

“Jesus, does nobody tell me anything around here?” Steve questioned aloud, shaking his head. Catching the sight of you in the mirror, he turned towards you and frowned. “Oh for god’s sake, can you calm it down in here?”

“Jealous, Stevie?” Bucky crooned, and nipped at your throat to make you giggle.

Steve rolled his eyes, muttering something about “waiting until you can get a fucking room” under his breath, and drove on towards the city and everything that waited there.

 

You found Tony in his lab, as you had expected. The music was loud and you could smell fresh coffee in the air; he was in the zone, and in a damn good mood that you knew for certain you were about to spoil. He was on his back on a creeper, working on the undercarriage of what was either the recently dismembered remains of a classic car or some new gliding hoverboard design he’d been talking about in recent weeks.

You tried to call his name several times but it got lost in the blare of “Paranoid”, until finally you shouted a loud “DAD!” and the music cut out as it was programmed to do if you ever called him.

“Hey, what’s up, peanut?” Tony called, pushing himself out from under whatever it was he was tinkering with. He rubbed his greasy hands on his jeans and stood, his smile falling and fading to a suspicious frown when he noticed Bucky standing beside you.

“I have something to tell you,” you said, trying for a weak smile.

“Where did you disappear to yesterday?” Tony asked casually. “And what’s with the Tin Soldier? You spill our little secret?”

You cleared your throat and nodded, trying to steel yourself for what was to come. “Yeah, Bucky knows,” you said quietly.

“Okay…” Tony agreed slowly. “Well, I guess someone was bound to figure it out sooner or later. No harm, no foul, right?”

“That’s not it,” you said, shaking your head. It was harder than you thought; you knew your father well by then, certain that his reaction was going to be bad no matter how gently you tried to break the news. Heaving a deep breath, you did the only thing you could think to do: you reached behind you and twined your fingers with Bucky’s.

Tony’s eyes widened at the action, his gaze shifty first to you, then to Bucky, and back again.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he croaked, voice at a loss.

“Dad, look,” you started, taking a step forward.

Tony raised his hands and took a step back, shaking his head. “Nope, no way,” he told you quickly. “No fucking way are you trying to explain this bullshit right here to me.”

You sighed. “Dad, please, would you just listen--”

“Are you sleeping with her?” he demanded of Bucky. “Is that why you’re here Barnes, to gloat that you’re nailing my kid?” Bucky opened his mouth to respond, something cutting and biting on the tip of his tongue no doubt, but you cut him off.

“Oh my god, Dad, you’re being ridiculous!” you shouted, casting a glare in his direction that he knew all too well. Only most of the time, when you argued like this, it was over something far less important: no, you can’t pierce your eyebrow, you’re only sixteen; no, you are not going out on a date with Johnny Storm, I don’t care how ‘hot’ you think he is; no, you are not getting involved with this Loki crap, you’re going back to the Xavier school and I’m not taking no for an answer.

But this was different. This was something more important, something real.

“I’m being ridiculous?” Tony spat back, shaking his head. “Do you even realize… he’s old enough to be your grandfather, your great-grandather…!”

“Would you make that argument if it was Steve?” you replied, glaring. “You have a vendetta against Bucky, you always have, he broke up your happy little Avengers family and…”

“He killed your grandparents!” Tony thundered back, and you went silent, unable to respond. “Did you tell you that, kiddo? That hand you’re holding, it choked the life out of my parents. Your family. Our family.”

You closed your eyes, knowing it would make it worse but needing to come clean. “I know,” you admitted quietly.

In a fit of anger, Tony turned and grabbed the nearest thing to him, a discarded wrench that sat on a nearby worktable, and threw it across the room where it landed with a crash. He whirled back, eyes wide and angry, face going red as his temper burned even.

“Well I hope you’re not here expecting some kind of fucking blessing, cos you’re not going to get it!” he said angrily. “Just… just get out of here. Go downstairs, go wherever.”

You choked back tears. “Tony…” you started. “Dad, please…”

“Get out of my sight,” he said coldly. “The both of you.”

 

You didn’t start to really sob until you were tucked away behind closed doors in Bucky’s suite. You crumpled against him and he held you close, rubbing your back and whispering soothing things into your hair as you shook and trembled. 

“It’ll be okay, doll,” Bucky told you. “We’ll make it alright again, I promise.”

When you had calmed a little and the tears dried up, you sniffled but held yourself close to Buck, cuddled beneath his arm and content to stay there.

“I’d understand,” he told you quietly. “He’s your father, I get it. If you need to… end things. I’d understand.”

You lifted your head, confusion written across your features. “End things?” you echoed.

Bucky cast his eyes down. “I mean… you know, darlin’, I don’t want you bustin’ up your family just to keep me happy. I get it, you can’t be… you can’t be givin’ that all up, just because…”

“I love you, Bucky,” you told him, shaking your head. “You’re my family too. It was never about getting his permission, Buck, it was just about stopping all the sneaking around. I don’t care what he says. I love you. That’s all that matters.”

You snuggled back against him, closing your eyes as you felt him exhale a relieved breath you hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“I love you too, baby girl,” Bucky said quietly. “More’n I ever thought I could.”

 

The days that followed were tense. Tony wouldn’t even look at you, so much as speak to you; if you entered a room and he was there, he got up and left, and the one time you tried to approach him in his lab he kept the music blasting too loud for you to hear yourself speak.

Pepper was your rock; she gave you a shoulder to cry on and reassured you that Tony would understand, in time. 

“You know how hard-headed he is,” she told you with a smile. “Look how long it took for him to get over himself and marry me.”

You laughed a little and hugged her. “Step-Pep, you’re the best,” you said with a sigh.

“Oh, I know,” she told you, brushing your hair away from your face. “I knew you’d fall for one of your dad’s superhero buddies, honey, but honestly, my money was on the speedy guy. I should have known better. You’re your father’s daughter, after all. It’s all or nothing with you crazy Starks.”

“Hey, I was born to the madness,” you replied. “You were nutty enough to marry into it.”

Pepper laughed and kissed you on the forehead. “Don’t I know it,” she agreed.

 

It came to a violent head as most things tended to do among your family, both surrogate and otherwise. Something as simple as a public appearance, your father accepting this or that award from whatever company he had recently rescued from bankruptcy and all hell breaks loose. You were all there, of course; you can’t imagine what was running through the heads of the troop of rag-tag terrorist wannabes with a chip on their shoulders that they thought it would be a good idea to take a shot at Tony Stark with his entire team of crime-fighting friends in attendance.

It would have been a simple enough job, if not for the screaming civilians running to and fro and the fact that none of you were in your appropriate gear. Of course it matter little to some of you; Natasha was a lethal weapon herself, with or without accessories, and Steve and Bucky had the whole super-powered soldier thing working for them.

And of course, it wasn’t as though you needed a jumpsuit to throw a ball of fire at the crazy-eyed woman with some sort of purple ray gun.

Tony always had a gadget or two on him and was nearly suited up when an errant blast from whatever tech they were using hit him broadside on the chest. Natasha took the man who had shot it with a well-placed kick to the sternum that sent him to the ground, a sickening crunching sound echoing in the now near-empty auditorium as he fell.

You barely heard it, too focused in how far your father had flown backward and how hard he had landed, hitting a table and sliding back on the floor with the force of it. You were already running towards him when Bucky dispatched the last of the attackers and you hit your knees among splintered wood and shattered glass, not even feeling the pain of it.

“Tony?” you asked, reaching to pull broken pieces of a half-formed suit from his body. He didn’t respond, didn’t even groan, and you kept pulling at debris, trying to reveal the man beneath. 

“Tony?” you asked again, voice going higher, making you sound even younger to the ears of the others who had gathered around you. “Dad? Dad? Daddy? Please say something, please, Dad? Daddy? Please!”

There was murmuring behind you, Clint mouthing the word ‘Daddy?’ at Natasha with a frown even as she shushed him, but you didn’t hear a word of it. You weren’t there anymore, not really, not completely; you were barely nine and a half, cuddled beneath your mother’s arm in a hospital bed, listening to her breathless voice try to sing you to sleep until the monitors began to wail and the nurses rushed in, pulling you out of her arms even as you screamed and cried.

Your mind couldn’t focus, grasping for your father’s hands, his chest, his face, anything to anchor you and tell you that he was alright, that it wasn’t happening again. You were near hysterical, calling for him over and over, tears streaming down your face until his dark eyes flicked open and he took a deep breath; you were grounded back into reality into an instant, choking out a sob of relief.

“Hey guys,” he called with his trademark irreverent charm. “What are we all staring at? You all know my daughter here, don’t you? I shouldn’t have to introduce you.”

You couldn’t stop crying, the adrenaline pumping through your veins clouding the relief to the point that you felt as though you couldn’t even catch your breath. Still a little too pained to sit up, Tony reached up his arm and pulled you down closer to him.

“Come on, c’mere peanut, it’s okay,” he said, crushing you against his chest. “We’re all right, everybody’s gonna be fine. Right guys?”

The others murmured affirmatively, and you just cried against your father’s chest.

“Calm down kiddo, we’re all okay,” he said soothingly. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

 

Near-death experiences did wonders for healing old wounds. After some posturing and threatening towards Bucky, Tony seemed ready to accept “whatever the hell this is between the two of you, I don’t want the details”, as he put it.

He did leave you with one warning, after watching the two of you together for a time, seeing the way Bucky smiled at you, the way he doted on you.

“Look, kiddo,” Tony said, shaking his head one cloudy afternoon as you sat watching him work on his latest project in the lab. “All I ask is that you don’t make me a grandfather any time soon, okay? I have an image to keep up.”

You snorted, but agreed. As it happened, it worked out for the best; it would have been weird to have a child the same age as the half-brother you hadn’t even known was on the way.

He would have to settle to being uncle to a boy only six or so years his junior, as it happened. When Bucky happened to catch your little brother trading sparks from his fingertips back and forth with your toddler son some years later, he shook his head and smiled.

“We’re gonna be in so much trouble with these two when they’re older,” he remarked, watching them from where you sat close together on the couch.

You smiled and took his hand in yours, sliding it from where he held it on your hip to rest flat against the softest part of your belly.

“These three,” you corrected, and his eyes lit up. It turned out telling secrets was a lot more fun than keeping them after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Genetically speaking, Tony is a carrier of the mutated allele (Pp) that causes pyrokinesis, and the reader's mother is pyrokinetic (pp), so it was a 50/50 shot that reader would be born pyrokinetic. For the reader's children to then manifest the same mutation, Bucky is also a carrier for the mutated allele (Pp) where reader is pyrokinetic (pp). Pepper is also a carrier (Pp), so her child with Tony (Pp) would have a 25% likelihood of manifesting the mutation (pp). At least one parent of Tony, Bucky, and Pepper would have to have been a carrier to transfer the dormant allele (Pp).
> 
> I seriously made punnet squares to make sure this all added up. Yay genetics!


End file.
